Twitter hack leads to false Matt Schaub trade report

First the Texans’ quarterback gets picked, and now the Texans’ radio play-by-play voice gets hacked – and on his birthday, no less.

The Twitter account @TexansVoice belonging to Marc Vandermeer, the Texans’ director of broadcasting, was hacked about 8:10 p.m. Friday with the message, “Texans have traded QB Matt Schaub to Cleveland Browns for WR Josh Gordon and a 3rd round pick in 2014 NFL Draft.”

About 15 minutes later, Vandermeer – the real deal this time – tweeted, “I’ve been hacked. No trade. Sorry for the craziness.”

Vandermeer, who celebrated his birthday Friday. said he was with his family when a colleague messaged that his Twitter account had been hacked.

“Oh, gosh. What did I say?” he replied. “And then I heard.”

The only consolation, Vandermeer said, is that anyone who knows him is aware he wouldn’t be breaking news of a trade — and an implausible one, at that — ahead of the team’s media relations department and that the tweet was an obvious phony.

“It’s kinda disturbing, really,” he said. “It feels awful because people’s lives are involved. My Facebook account was hacked once, but that was by somebody trying to sell something and I was the only one affected. Now it’s other people’s lives and whatever, and it feels awful. I’m just glad the truth is out and that it’s over.”

Vandermeer said he’s taken steps to secure his account, and he said that, no, his password was not “rockandroll,” his on-air catchphrase, as one wag suggested.

The Texans play the 49ers on Sunday night, one week after an overtime loss to the Seahawks in which Schaub for the third week in a row threw an interception that was returned for a touchdown.